EVENTS

Here too

A recent study entitled “Assessing hospital polices & practices regarding ectopic pregnancy & miscarriage management” investigated whether and how doctors’ treatment decisions regarding these potentially dangerous conditions are affected by working in religiously-affiliated hospitals.1 This Study focuses on Catholic hospitals as the largest religiously-affiliated provider in the United States,2 and uncovers disturbing examples of treatment practices that increase the odds of medical complications that place women’s lives and health at risk. The religiously-based limitations on doctors’ treatment of serious pregnancy complications documented in the Study contravene core principles underlying federal, and sometimes state, laws that are intended to protect patients.

This means situations exactly like that of Savita Halappanavar.

If it is determined that nothing can be done that would allow the woman to continue her pregnancy, the established standard of care for unstable patients who are miscarrying is an immediate surgical uterine evacuation.14 In the case of such a patient, immediate uterine evacuation reduces the patient’s risk of complications, including blood loss, hemorrhage, infection, and the loss of future fertility.15 A delay in treatment may subject a woman to unnecessary blood transfusions, risk of infection, hysterectomy or even death.16 Some Catholic hospitals, contrary to the opinion of leading Catholic ethicists and theologians,17 apply the Directives to prohibit doctors from providing any treatment to a woman having a miscarriage if there are still fetal heart tones, even when a doctor has determined that nothing can be done to save the pregnancy and the woman’s health is placed at risk by delaying immediate treatment. These hospitals will require that doctors withhold treatment until there are no fetal heart tones, or there are specific indications that a woman’s life is at risk, such as the onset of a serious infection.

The catholics seem to be taking over all the hospitals they can get their hands on. It’s a scary thought given the “faith based” changes in what a hospital will do.

To say nothing of the other problems one can encounter working for them. It’s no wonder that they up being unionized because they don’t treat their employees well at all. I say this with a 10 year aggregate of working for 2 different catholic hospitals.

This is nothing new. This has been going on forever. And even more: some Catholic doctors will apply their own warped sense of morality to women who have a perfect right to treatment, even if they’re not Catholic. My mother nearly died having her sixth child because the only doctor available to her was Catholic, and he refused to tie her tubes after her fifth pregnancy, or put her on birth control – because HE was Catholic. She was not, but, well, she was a woman, so probably she didn’t really know what was best for her, right?

This doctor had the gall to tell my mother when she returned to his office pregnant with number six that she shouldn’t have gotten pregnant again. My mother was not a gentle woman, and she had a very strong habit of speaking her mind. I wouldn’t have wanted to be that doctor.

She nearly didn’t survive that pregnancy, and the child was born with problems that kept her in NICU for a month. Thanks, Pope.

Well, the most obvious solution is to burn down all the Catholic hospitals. The Church does not have the assets to rebuild them with all the legal entanglements from clergy abuse cases. This could be the end of the Catholic Church if we act now. Burn, baby, burn.

Oh, but wait. if we burn them down, many people would be left without health care. Sure, We could burn down St. Joe’s and others could take up the slack. Many communities do not have this advantage and many would be left without health care.